Cargill gives $1.2M to Kansas State University

Manhattan  Agribusiness company Cargill is giving $1.2 million to Kansas State University to continue helping minority students study agriculture, business and engineering.

The school says the Cargill Project Impact Diversity Partnership was first introduced in 2008 through a gift of $1 million. Since it started, the school has seen a 68 percent increase in minority student enrollment in the target disciplines.

Eighty-seven percent of the Cargill scholarship recipients return for their second year. That is 4 percentage points higher than the school's overall first-to-second-year retention rate and 17 percentage points higher than minority students overall.

The school's associate provost for diversity, Myra Gordon, praised the gift as "generous." She says it helps the school reach its goals of recruiting and retraining more minority students.